v0.8.1 Game Status: Ship Shop (Patreon)

Hey all, it's mid-month update time! While I generally hate to release partially-implemented functionality in an update, this time it's unavoidable both due to the amount of work required in setting up the new ship classes, and some personal schedule issues this week. However, a lot of progress has been made, so here's how things currently look:

• Watch Station market: You will now be able to exchange DTF merits, GPU millitals, and upgrade components at Watch Station. The eventual design goal is that shops will be unlockable in various GPU systems with better deals on specific items, with the WS market being the 'shop of last resort', but of course most GPU systems are not currently in the game. I've said it before and I'll probably say it many more times, but pretty much everything related to the game's economic systems is quite unplaytested and prone to future balance changes.
• Ship renaming: You can now rename your current ship at the dockyards! Pretty straightforward.
• Ship purchasing and swapping: The functionality for doing ship purchases has been implemented, however the actual ships themselves still need construction work. I've therefore turned off the ability to purchase, mostly to avoid needing to do savegame fixes in an update or two. You can at least do some window shopping, though.

I don't believe I've actually talked much about my goals for ship upgrades yet, so now's probably a good time to do so. My goal is to eventually have at least four tiers of ship classes in the game, possibly five, veeeerrry maybe six. This is long-term, right now I'm not expecting to get past Tier 2 this year. With each tier, obviously the ships will get bigger and the numbers will go up. However, the ship specializations will also become much more focused in higher tiers. The one Tier 1 ship is a generalist, with equal attention paid to all five crew departments (Tactical, Engineering, Medical, R&D and Cultural). In Tier 2 you will find three options waiting for you: an upgraded generalist, a combat-focused ship, and a science-focused ship. In higher tiers I plan to have even more specialization, with 5-6 ships per tier.

There's two ways these specializations will be implemented. First, there's the stats: hull, shields, speed, and stealth. This is the more straightforward of the two, higher tiers have higher stats, while combat-focused ships will generally have higher defenses compared to speed and vice-versa. The more complex method is through ship stations. The most direct impact will be on your bridge, where the available stations will decide who you can assign to your bridge team, and the options you'll have in both space and ground combat. The rest of the ship will contribute as well, however. As you may have noted on the starter ship, each ship section has the ability to provide various bonuses and resources related to their ship department. More specialized ships will focus more heavily on particular departments, and that will make it easier to progress up that line as new tiers open up. For example, science ships will both cost more R&D components and produce them. It's in setting up these ship sections that the remaining work still needs to be done.

In terms of ship ownership, you will only be able to have one active ship at a time. Any ship you've previously purchased can be reused at any time, but if you attempt to swap to a ship with a smaller crew capacity, you may need to fire some folks to make them fit. I may add in an option to automatically populate ship stations with available crewmembers, I intentionally did not do this for the tutorial to force people to get familiar with the system, but I may allow this through the dockyard interface.

Since the ship market's taking a bit longer than I was hoping, shapeshifting's been pushed back again. Once I do get this wrapped up, I'll be returning again to getting some story done, probably some Seeders this month. That's about all I have for tonight, so til next time, patrons can find the game at the previous post, and the patch notes are below. Enjoy!

v0.8.1 Change Log

Game Functions:

• Quartermaster Office added to Watch Station. Quartermaster allows for the currency exchange of DTF Merits and GPU Millitals, and low-volume trading of upgrade items for merits.
• Dockyard Office added to Watch Station:
• Your current ship can now be renamed at the Dockyard Office.
• The ship shop can now be viewed, along with Tier 2 vessels. Purchasing new ships is disabled until ship design is complete.
• Functionality added to swap between your current ship and one you have purchased. Note: It will not be possible to swap to a ship too small to house your current crew roster.

Scene Content:

• Scenes added for new Watch Station locations.

Art Content:

• None

Codex Entries:

• None

Bug Fixes:

• None

Known Issues:

• None​